


E.B.E.

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [19]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Related, Flirting, Gen, Government Conspiracy, Lies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4287519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She could only follow as he barreled ahead, tilting at windmills, convinced they were the proof that even she would not deny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	E.B.E.

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 1.16 "E.B.E."  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

There were days Scully wanted to lock Mulder in a closet somewhere, and days she wanted to shoo him out of the office into the sunshine for a new perspective. Sometimes she didn't know what to do with him. "I think it's remotely plausible someone might think you're hot," he told her, and she was irritated and flattered and flustered, not in equal parts, though she would not have cared to define the precise proportions. He was frustrating, brilliant, moody, wounded, sardonic. His informants blindfolded him and promised to lead him to the truth and he believed them. 

Perhaps it was her detachment that shielded her from following in his credulous footsteps down a path that went nowhere. Perhaps it was her need to maintain balance. They kept each other honest, she and Mulder. There was an equilibrium to their lives. Only their faith in each other was absolute, but he wanted so badly to believe and she could only follow as he barreled ahead, tilting at windmills, convinced they were the proof that even she would not deny. 

When these men deceived him, these men whom he trusted, she became furious. She would protect him from the cruelties of this world. He had suffered enough. When they lured him into following these false trails, she followed him; her sense of duty ran too deep. All they found were lies. Scully touched Mulder's arm to comfort him as her fury grew. These men should know better. They shouldn't abuse his yearning to comprehend a muddled and uncertain present. Mulder's mind, Mulder's trust: these were fine and fragile things, exquisitely valuable. She could not see them broken.

Never had she imagined investigating the innermost mechanisms of her own government. She had taken this job because she believed in higher things: in truth, in beauty, in justice. The longer she worked with Mulder, the less clear things seemed. She had found beauty, moments of it scattered through the dross of a system in which entropy was increasing at a rate to surpass belief. She had found truths, obfuscatory and contradictory. She had begun to suspect there was no justice, at least no justice that lasted. It seemed that there were always layers untouched by light. Like the depths of the ocean, there were unsounded depths, and Mulder's notation: here be monsters.

They lived in rental cars and bus stops and motels, transients passing through with the hope of righting wrongs. Even their basement office had no place for two. He ceded her the desk from time to time; they shuffled their papers around through the system of file cabinets. The world so often seemed indifferent to their crusade, but then her pen was bugged. The faceplate of his electrical socket pulled away to reveal a microphone. Someone was watching, and she knew the surveillance was unkind. She tried to tell him in the warm shelter of her apartment, tea steaming on the table, the false photograph on her kitchen table. He thanked her and went anyway, and there was nothing she could do but follow, and watch his faith bruise from another blow.

She would not let him go alone into this elaborate game of cat and mouse. They had built a better mouse trap to ensnare him, but she would disassemble it, piece by piece.


End file.
